Ward's public career spanned three decades and a multiplicity of responsibilities--military officer, three-time mayor of Austin, presidential appointments as U.S. Consul to Panama and a federal customs official in Texas--but it was as Texas land commissioner during the 1840s that he particularly made his mark. At a time when land was the principal asset of the Texas republic and the magnet that attracted immigrants, he fought to remedy the land system's many defects and to fulfill the promise of free land to those who settled and fought for Texas.

If Ward had a remarkable career, his life was nonetheless troubled by symptoms comparable to those experienced by recent war veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder--a hair-trigger temper, an impulse to violence, and marital discord. His wife, Susan Ward, though deeply in love with him at the start, eventually left him and accused him in two bitterly fought court cases of verbal, psychological, and physical abuse. To many of his fellow Texans, however, Ward remained a hero who had sacrificed his leg for a noble cause--independence from Mexico.